The morning pages are tedious for me, because of the handwriting. I know she thinks that there is something important about writing by hand, but I don't think realizes that many of us in the hi tech industry have pretty much lost our capacity to write out our thoughts in longhand. I used to have lovely penmanship, loved writing out long pages of thoughts... but I have been working with computers for over twenty years, and when I write over 1/4 page in longhand, I feel like I am using shoehorns instead of hands. I can't write as thoroughly as I think, or as streamlined as if I were typing on a keyboard.

I hope that in the future she updates her conventional thinking to include keyboarding morning pages. I would love for her to actually do some empirical research on whether keyboarding is actually detrimental to the process.

Meanwhile, I am so happy with the Artist's Way process that I am afraid to modify it, so I write out pages in longhand. I pretty much just write out workout journals or to do lists or the same sentence over and over again to get my pages done and over with. All the while I appreciate taking the time to do this, even though it is difficult to form my hands around that little writing instrument for 15 minutes.

That said, my favorite lifestyle adoption was the Artist Date. I too had forgotten that the book had incorporated that into my life, and now I couldn't do without it!

I few years back I participated in an ongoing "Artist's Way" class. It helped me trmemendously and yes, I was very good at keeping my morning pages. I now have several notebooks worth of morning pages. I am not sure what to do with them. At some point, I want to go back and read them, but I am not quite ready to do it.

Has anyone else looked through your old morning pages? How did it effect you?

I suppose I "cheat" a bit, as far as the morning pages go. I don't always write them in the morning. I don't always write them by hand-- frequently the creative flow goes into my blog, instead; which, of course, is typed. I'm not even sure if they really ARE "morning pages"-- I've been journalling volumes and volumes since age seven or eight. Where does one end, and the other begin? Writing is such a flow-of-consciousness thing for me that I find it hard to say "now I am writing in my journal" and "now I am writing morning pages" and "now I am writing something that's going to become an article." They are all both unique.... and the same. The only "autonomous" writing I do goes in my dream journal.

Any writing I do-- other than "writing to order"-- tends to take the general form of "conversations with the voices inside my head" (also the title of my blog) and I do find it very helpful as a way to solve problems, as well as to think about life, the universe, and everything (tip of the hat to Douglas Adams).

--Peter